


every minute and every hour

by finalizer



Series: the effects of your life on mine [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Humor, M/M, domesticity with no plot whatsoever, these damn nerds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 05:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7254409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finalizer/pseuds/finalizer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten minutes and half a jar of Nutella later, Hamilton is leaning forward over the table, more hyped up on sugar than any grown man has the right to be this early in the morning.</p><p>Or, a day in the life of two people with laughably messed up sleeping schedules. It's really Hamilton's fault, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	every minute and every hour

**Author's Note:**

> how did i end up here

Burr wakes up half an hour before his alarm even goes off because his little spoon is missing. Now, Alexander would loudly and passionately object to being called a little spoon _—_  a little _anything_ , for the matter _—_  but there are some things that can’t be denied. Namely, his position as the little spoon.

They’d learned a while ago that they’d become dependent enough on each other in their miraculously functioning relationship to result in the inability to fall asleep without the other at their side. A trivial argument would end with Burr on the couch, tossing and turning for hours, unable to get any shuteye. Alexander, hogging the bed, sprawled across the covers, would maneuver into a thousand different positions, equally powerless against his racing thoughts. The only solution _—_  one swallows their pride and apologizes to the other. Mutual consensus ensues, followed by a pathetically overemotional truce, then finally sleep.

They would wake the next morning with Alexander tucked into Burr, clinging like a small child; or with Burr possessively sprawled over Alexander, somehow _not_ choking him to death, as if he’d never learned the concept of personal space.

So, it’s disconcerting when Burr wakes up to utter darkness and a cold, empty space at his side. It’s six in the morning, he’s exhausted beyond belief, but there’s no doubt in his mind that he’s done with sleep for the night.

He hears quiet shuffling coming from the kitchen _—_  would’ve been soft enough not to disturb his sleep (if only he could sleep without Alexander, damn it all).

Throwing on a bathrobe to protect him from the chilly air, he treads over to the windows and pulls open the curtains, biting back an upset groan. The streets are dark and murky, winter mornings in DC as dreary as ever. But duty calls. Duty, and the instinctual need to check up on Alexander, make sure he hadn’t yet burned the kitchen down in an attempt to make coffee.

Sure enough, there’s a half empty pot steaming on the counter. Burr takes one whiff and thanks the heavens for small mercies and Alexander’s equally fundamental dependence on caffeine.

He gives the kitchen a quick once-over, grimacing at the emptied Red Bull cans lined up beside the sink. Burr knows he would never dismiss Alexander’s plaguing insomnia by blaming it on poor eating habits, but he wouldn’t deny they were a largely contributing factor.

Seconds later, coffee in hand, he turns the corner and tentatively enters the living room, cautious of whatever workaholic trance Alexander had already driven himself into.

It’d happened twice before, maybe three times: Alexander getting so immersed in whatever he was doing that he didn’t notice Burr coming up behind him. Long story short, it usually ended with Alexander’s army instincts kicking in, and then frantic apologies. So far, the worst casualty had been a split lip. Alexander had kissed it better, no harm done.

Burr clears his throat and waits for a response. He leans against the doorway and watches with morbid fascination as Alexander hacks away at his keyboard, typing so forcefully it appears as though the poor laptop had personally offended him in one way or another. He’s half-sitting up on the far end of the couch, propped up by too many pillows, and completely unresponsive.

“Good morning,” Burr says finally, falsely cheerful.

Alexander’s head whips up and his fingers freeze and hover over the computer. He blinks drowsily (his dark circles even more prominent than the night before) and then grins like the madman he is.

“Yo,” comes the long awaited reply. “You’re up pretty early.”

The comment doesn’t sound like a joke and Burr wonders if Alexander even realizes how little sleep he himself gets _—_  worrying about Burr’s sleeping schedule when Alexander was the one to fall asleep in a live televised cabinet meeting two years prior.

Burr decides not to press the subject.

“Bed got cold,” he says instead.

Alexander watches him carefully for as long as his attention span will allow, before glancing back at his computer screen and frowning at whatever he’d last written.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I just _—_  woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep. And then I thought of the perfect counterargument and had to type it up.”

Burr settles down at the opposite end of the couch, swatting Alexander’s feet out of the way.

“Is this about the neutrality debate?”

Alexander attacks his keyboard for another moment, before pausing again. “What? No. It’s the, uh, it’s the Twitter guy.”

The Twitter guy _—_  a story Burr hadn’t even wanted to learn the details of. Something about Alexander and his ongoing feud with an anonymous internet critic: the very definition of petty and immature.

“Forget I asked.”

Alexander shoots him another smile before reengaging in his virtual battle. Burr sits for a while, drinking his coffee (black, bitter, much like himself), and stares at the wall for lack of better entertainment.

It isn’t until he hears rustling from the other side of the couch that he realizes Alexander’s breakfast consists of an entire bag of chewy vitamins.

Burr drains his coffee and just barely suppresses a sigh, before pushing himself to his feet and announcing he’s going to make actual breakfast.

Alexander kicks his foot out in Burr’s direction, poking his thigh with his toes as he walks away. “Make pancakes. With Nutella.”

Burr doesn’t even bother to look back. “Yes, dear.”

He has no awareness of the passing time until his alarm rings out from the bedroom, and he’s painfully reminded of the thirty minutes of sleep he’d lost. He heads off to silence the high pitched beeping and isn’t at all surprised when he returns to find Alexander devouring the pancakes straight off the pan, spooning Nutella clean out of the jar.

“Smelled so good I couldn’t stay put,” Alexander says, in lieu of an explanation. “You’re a goddamn miracle worker.”

Burr stalks up to Alexander and gently steers him away from the stove, pours more batter onto the pan for himself. “I know. Fuck politics, I should’ve gone into the culinary arts.”

“You missed your true calling.”

“I’ll never live it down.”

Burr opens an overhead cabinet and takes out two plates, pointedly setting one down in front of Alexander. He understands Alexander’s lifelong struggle _—_  not being tall enough to reach the highest shelves. But that’s what standing on chairs is for. Especially when one forgets to clean up the counters after going plate-less.

 

Ten minutes and half a jar of Nutella later, Alexander is leaning forward over the table, more hyped up on sugar than any grown man has the right to be this early in the morning.

“So, Craig deactivated his account.”

Burr frowns at him. “Who?”

“Twitter guy,” Alexander elaborates. He sounds genuinely upset at having lost a formidable bantering partner. “I drove him off the internet.”

“At least you didn’t drag us both out of bed at this hour for nothing. Your early morning comeback worked its magic.”

Alexander nods.

A comfortable silence envelops the room, Burr staring in fascination at this rare moment of tranquility. Alexander never sits still for more than a minute, always wringing his hands or tapping his feet as if there’s an irrepressible energy inside him that he just can’t shake. Burr thinks back on the emptied energy drinks. Figures.

“I gotta go get ready,” he says eventually, regrettably. He wishes he could look at Alexander longer. Just a little while.

That snaps Alexander out of his haze. He jumps out of his seat and half jogs around the table to block Burr’s path to the bathroom. “No, not yet. Stay.”

“Why?” Burr asks instinctively, though Alexander’s hands on his chest, halting his movement, are as good a reason as any to linger. “I didn’t get out of bed at the asscrack of dawn just to be late to work.”

Burr swears he can pinpoint the moment the lively sparkle in Alexander’s eyes morphs into something else entirely. Everyone has their ways of dealing with an impromptu early morning sugar rush, and Burr doesn’t find himself minding Alexander’s intentions one bit.

“Just a while, Aaron,” Alexander promises. “The job can wait. The world will spin on without you.”

Then, Alexander’s hands are ghosting over his shoulders, fingers wrapping around the collar of Burr’s bathrobe.

Alexander, eternally unable to shut up and let actions replace words, keeps talking. “I mean, you’re not even dressed yet. It’d be a shame to waste such a perfect opportunity.”

Burr takes initiative as subtly as possible, letting his gaze drop down to Alexander’s lips.

And that does it: Alexander hauls Burr down to his height and pulls him in for a kiss, Burr’s hands immediately going to Alexander’s hips to draw him closer.

 

A few minutes turns into a half hour and then they’re laying side by side, Alexander’s head on Burr’s shoulder, sheets tangled between their legs. It’s one of those moments Burr wishes would last longer, instead of being cruelly interrupted by something as trivial as a text message, from Jefferson no less.

 

_from: Jefferson [7:59]_

_we’re starting in 30 where r u_

_from: Jefferson [8:00]_

_pls tell me ur not still bumping uglies with ur secret lover_

_from: Jefferson [8:00]_

_i kno ur seeing someone. u look too happily fucked all the time_

_from: Jefferson [8:01]_

_don’t be late_

Hearing Burr’s sigh, Alexander immediately props himself up on one shoulder and puts on his best grimace.

“Jefferson?” he asks, with the kind of venom only Alexander Hamilton would be capable of; his hatred for Jefferson as ingrained in his very bones as it is.

“Unfortunately.”

Burr swings his legs over the side of the bed and begrudgingly crosses the room towards his closet, Alexander watching his movements (ass) from his spot on the bed.

“I’ve said this a million times before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t know how you spend entire workdays with that useless jackass without strangling him four times over.”

Burr flips through his perfectly pressed shirts before settling on a pale blue number. One of Alexander’s favorites, let him admire the view.

“Nerves of steel,” he explains. “And years of practice.”

Alexander continues his rant. Even in his old age (“ _Quit saying that, Burr. I’m only one year older than you._ ”), it takes more than one round of invigorating morning sex to fully tire him out. But it doesn’t take any more than an implied text from his nemesis to rile him up.

“Still, Jefferson is an annoying motherfucker. A goddamn know it all. He knows nothing.”

Burr finds the tie he was looking for and turns to the mirror to properly tie it. That way, he doesn’t have to look Alexander in the eyes when he says, “I mean, he is right on this particular stance _—_  about why I’m late. Because my _secret lover_ couldn’t keep it in his pants.”

“Don’t side with Thomas Jefferson in our bedroom.”

Lighthearted banter is an instinctual response. “So, anywhere else is fine?”

Alexander actually sits up, properly offended. “How dare you? After I just gave you the best blowjob of your entire life.”

Burr throws on his jacket and delivers the final blow. “I wouldn’t say it was _the best_   _—_ ”

A pillow comes flying in his direction, followed by a barely coherent growl of, “Get out of my sight,” and then Alexander is tripping over the covers in an attempt to get off the bed.

Burr ducks out the door before anything else can get hurled at his head, and half-sprints to the hallway to get his shoes on and escape the apartment.

He isn’t quick enough, because Alexander is stomping towards him (hastily bundled in Burr’s previously discarded robe), an angry frown crumpling his forehead.

He comes to a stop in front of Burr just as the latter finishes knotting his shoelaces and straightens up. Burr braces himself for more bickering, and is taken aback when Alexander takes Burr’s hand in his own and pulls himself closer to give Burr a chaste kiss.

“Have fun at work,” he says after. “Don’t strangle anybody.”

“I could say the same to you,” Burr replies without missing a beat.

A moment passes, and Burr is halfway out the door before he turns back and levels Alexander with a calculating look. “Shouldn’t you be at work, too?”

Alexander stares at him, then his eyes widen, there’s a loud shout of “ _FUCK_ ,” followed by distressed scrambling as Alexander trips over his own feet to speed back into the bedroom to get dressed.

For all the good that coffee does him, it never succeeds in getting his head on straight.

Burr closes the door behind himself.

 

/

 

Office hours extend more often than not, especially with Burr’s mess of a political party trying to reach some kind of accord amongst themselves. Alternatively, half the time it’s solely Jefferson’s fault that they all stay at work for far longer than any human being should.

Incidentally, it’d been one of those days.

Jefferson had literally laid down on the floor in the middle of his office for an hour, with a milkshake, and refused to sign the documents Burr had attempted to hand him, until he, quote: _found his inner chill, that he’d lost back when Hamilton had first out-maneuvered him and won Washington’s favor_.

Jefferson failed to find his chill, but he eventually signed the papers, god bless the man.

 

Burr staggers towards his apartment, weeks of sleepless nights and work-induced weariness catching up to him with alarming speed. He’d almost fallen asleep behind his steering wheel as he’d waited at the Burger King drive thru. It was sad, that he’d resorted to easy fast food meals, instead of taking the time to prepare dinner. It was Alexander’s bad influence. Also, Burr was constantly too tired to care.

He fishes the keys from his briefcase and takes longer than necessary to unlock the door and stumble inside. Carelessly kicking his shoes off, he sets the briefcase down and drops his keys onto the kitchen counter on his way to the living room.

Alexander’s unnervingly happy voice rings out to greet him before Burr even crosses the threshold.

“I’m in here. You are so late. What happened? Did something happen? It was Jefferson, wasn’t it? That bastard _—_  ”

Burr enters the room and holds his hand up to silence Alexander’s tirade. Miraculously enough, it works like a charm.

There are papers strewn across every horizontal surface of the living room, including a loose sheet balanced haphazardly atop Burr’s favorite ficus. Alexander himself is curled up in the armchair by the window balancing his laptop on his knees and a folder in either hand. Burr admires his dedication, and worries for his mental stability.

A half-finished bowl of ramen sits on the very edge of the coffee table, and if Burr wasn’t too shocked at the concept of Alexander actually preparing his own dinner (however college student-esque), he would have walked over to it and moved it to a less precarious location.

Alexander follows Burr’s line of sight to the bowl and looks guilty for a split second.

“You were gone so long I grabbed whatever was in the cupboard. Did you eat out? You can cook something now, I don’t mind, I’m full.”

Full was a relative term, apparently, because the ramen looked like it’d barely been touched before it’d grown cold.

“I got take out. Brought you fries.”

Alexander’s eyes light up and he looks like a child on Christmas morning. “You beautiful, kind hearted man,” he says, voice breaking with emotion, and Burr thinks back on how easy it could have been to make Alexander fall in love with him years ago: just buy the man fries. Instead, it’d taken months, if not years of unrequited (though apparently requited) pining, and countless embarrassing first dates.

It takes a moment for Burr to cross the living room without stepping on any undeniably vital documents to hand Alexander the paper bag. Alexander makes grabby hands at it until it’s within his grasp, then snatches the bag like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. Burr almost feels bad for the unappreciated ramen.

Alexander, momentarily pulled away from his work by the apparently orgasmic pseudo-dinner he’s devouring, sets the papers down on his keyboard and focuses his full attention on the fries.

Burr takes the opportunity to strike up a conversation. They rarely talk _—_  despite living together, they barely have enough hours in the day to make small talk, let alone discuss real, important matters, such as the eternal query: _how the hell do I manage not to get hard whilst debating with you on live TV, Alex, since we both know how damn good you look when you’re impassioned and yelling about constitutional rights_.

“I heard you were talking shit about Madison today,” Burr starts, taking a seat on the floor, in a blessedly paper-free zone. He lets his head fall back against the wall, taking in the first truly quiet moments of the day. Save for Alexander’s enthusiastic chewing, but that could be overlooked.

“You heard right,” comes the immediate reply, mouth-full. _Manners_ , Alexander.

“Will there ever come a day where I don’t find out about your antics through national television? Maybe, just maybe, one day I’ll come home and cook dinner, and we’ll sit down at the table like adults and have a nice chat about what we were up to all day. Instead, I refresh the news app and find out that Alexander Hamilton had just gone on a Twitter rant calling Madison out on his trade policies.”

“They’re bullshit policies.”

“Save it for the campaign,” Burr retorts, then: “He’s right, though. About the policies.”

Alexander crumples the now empty paper bag and hurls it in the general direction of the kitchen _—_  a mess that Burr will later have to clean up, after Alexander passes out from sheer exhaustion with his head tucked against his laptop screen.

“They’re bullshit policies,” Alexander repeats. “Let’s not talk shop at home. We outgrew hate sex months ago.”

It’s as good an argument as any. Burr takes a moment to admire Alexander’s sudden maturity. In most cases, the man would not give up without a long and tiring fight. The Alexander Hamilton that Burr was used to would fight anything and everything that moved, (including himself, that one memorable time he was too tired to realize he was staring at his own reflection and had yelled at a mirror).

“Anyway, Madison had it coming.”

Burr closes his eyes and waits for Alexander to elaborate. Here meaning: give a ten minute long speech about why he is right and everyone else from the opposing party is wrong. The speech doesn’t come.

Burr opens his eyes and sees Alexander guzzling coffee straight out of the pot. He’d evidently reached the breaking point.

Using the wall as a pillar, Burr climbs to his feet and waits for Alexander to lower the pot enough to snatch it away without spilling any on his laptop.

“Hey, don’t touch my coffee,” comes the instantaneous complaint. “Aaron, come back here. Give me my damn coffee. Pretty please.”

Burr weaves his way through the paperwork labyrinth on the floor and retreats to the kitchen, coffee pot in hand.

“No more coffee at this hour,” he says, loud enough for Alexander to hear. “I thought we'd agreed on that.”

There’s some rustling, a thud, another thud, then muffled swearing, and Alexander pops up in the doorway looking disheveled. His hair falls loose from his bun, the strands framing his face giving him the appearance of someone who hadn’t slept in a month. It’s more likely than it seems.

“That was one time,” he insists. “I can hold my caffeine better now.”

This particular _one time_ referring to the incident where, following a series of three coffee fueled all-nighters in a row, Alexander had snapped in the midst of a particularly heated argument with Jefferson and suggested they fist fight it out on the front lawn of the White House. Luckily, Burr hadn’t been too far away, and had dragged Alexander away by the back of his shirt (Alexander, a misbehaving child, instance no.1804) before words turned to blows.

Burr gives him a patronizing smile. “I believe you. But it doesn’t dissuade me. I’ll get some tea started instead.”

And then Alexander is watching with unbridled horror as Burr pours the remainder of the coffee down the drain. Good riddance.

 

It’s two hours and two mugs of tea later that Burr decides he’s had enough of proofreading Jefferson’s essays for one night, and drops everything in favor of a shower.

He’s halfway across the room when Alexander makes an unintelligible noise to get Burr’s attention before he strays too far to hear it.

“I wrote the note.”

Burr peeks his head through the doorway. “The note?”

“Yeah, the note you told me to write. For the neighbors.”

Burr almost hits his head against the wall. “I wasn’t serious. What did you write?”

“What you said,” Alexander says (pouting). “To apologize for being way too loud during sex, and to promise I would try to tone it down next time.”

“I was joking.”

“It didn’t sound like you were joking.”

“Please don’t tell me you actually intended to slip that into the Rogers’ mailbox. The ninety year old couple? You wanted to disclose the details of your sex life to two people who’d lived through World War II and have seen _enough_?”

Alexander’s pout increases in intensity and he looks seconds away from stomping his foot like a spoiled boy being denied candy.

“Apparently, I still can’t tell when you’re joking, then.”

“Christ _—_  Alex. Just don’t deliver the note. And keep quiet next time. Don’t force the poor people to take out their hearing aids to avoid hearing your screams of passion.”

It’s Burr’s deadpan tone that does it.

“You’re just too good to me.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to wake the entire block.”

“I thought you liked hearing my screams of passion.”

“ _Quieter_ , then. You can scream all you want, just _—_  not as loud.”

Alexander looks about as smug as someone who hasn’t slept since college can look. That, and extraordinarily horny. They’re fickle things, his moods.

Burr obliges.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he starts, and Alexander’s face falls. “And you’re going to join me.”

The grin is back and Alexander’s shirt is off before Burr even has time to close the bathroom door behind them.

 

It’s a few minutes past three in the morning when Burr feels himself being nudged awake. Alexander is prodding at his shoulder, poking relentlessly, and Burr ignores this until the bright red numbers on his alarm clock swim into focus.

“What is it?”

Alexander stops poking. “Where’d you get the fries?”

Burr is silent for a long time, long enough for Alexander to come to the conclusion that he’d fallen back asleep, and resume his prodding.

“I’m going to have to take a day off soon, to sleep off the bullshit you wake me up for.”

Alexander is undeterred. He shuffles closer and hooks a leg around Burr’s. It’s as if this talk of fries puts him in a romantic mood.

“I’m serious. They were better than McDonald’s. But not as good as the stuff from the cafeteria at work. Laf brought up a whole tray once and that was literally the only time I ever took an actual break at the office.”

“Burger King.”

“Huh,” Alexander seems to mull this over in his mind. Burr can feel his soft breaths against his skin, lulling him back to sleep. Oblivion is so close he can almost feel its gentle caress.

“You know, I can’t remember the last time I went to Burger King. In fact, I can’t recall the last time I went out to eat at all. Maybe we could _—_  ”

“Shh.”

Alexander falls silent and stays that way, as if waiting for Burr to elaborate.

“I _—_  we can discuss this in the morning. Fast food preferences. Not now. Now sleep. Be quiet and sleep.”

Burr can sense Alexander’s petulance in the air. He wraps an arm around Alexander to draw him closer.

“I’ll take you to Burger King; my treat.”

How Alexander manages to sound thoroughly awake when he says, “It’s a date,” is beyond Burr and his sleep-muddled brain to comprehend.

“Mhm.”

A minute or so later, Alexander pipes up again, goddamn him.

“Extra fries?”

“Shut your mouth, Alexander.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm 90% sure this is not what lin manuel miranda intended


End file.
